


Distance

by interlude



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emori's not really sure how to deal with it, Emori-centric, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Inspired by the trailer, Murphy has depression, SPACE SQUAD, Season/Series 05, and that .02 seconds of Memori content, season 5 speculation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-04-05 08:10:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14039931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interlude/pseuds/interlude
Summary: Murphy decides to stay behind on the prisoner ship while the rest of the Space Squad goes to Earth. Emori feels separated from him in more ways than one.Meanwhile, there are other people on Earth, and they’re threatening to tear apart the new family Emori has found.(a canon-divergent season 5 fic started before the season aired)





	1. Separation

John volunteers to stay on the prisoner ship with Bellamy.

 

The news grabs Emori’s heart with icy fingers. She feels the ache throbbing behind her ribcage. No one says they might never see them again – that this might be nothing more than a suicide mission dressed up with nicer words – but it rings as loudly in the silence as it would if someone shouted it.

 

She wants to hug him before they go. She wants to fling her arms around him and sink herself inside him, become some essential piece he can’t leave behind – like she’s wanted to do for a long time.

 

She doesn’t.

 

The goodbyes are short and simple. Raven and Monty hug Bellamy tightly, and he surprises Emori by hugging her as well. He’s taller and broader than her, and, for a minute, when she closes her eyes, she can almost pretend she’s in her brother’s arms again.

 

John stays separated from the group. He keeps his space, in a way that’s become distressingly familiar. His farewells with the group are more stilted than Bellamy’s had been. Raven punches him affectionately in the shoulder and tells him not to take too long. Echo warns him to stay smart.

 

Emori hesitates.

 

There’s only a few feet between them, but it feels like miles of unconquerable desert – surely she’d perish before she managed to close that space. It’s been growing for so long.

 

Hug him, her heart yearns, but she doesn’t move, held captive by her longing and her grief and her resentment and her tired acceptance.

 

“Survive, please,” she manages.

 

John smiles. It’s of the desert, dry and brittle. Dying. It’s familiar and she hates it, because it’s a New John smile – the John she found in space, who has whittled himself down into almost nothing – and she hates him with the kind of rage and bitterness that only grief and hurt can birth. A selfish, damaged part of her wants to take the words back. They weren’t for you, she wants to say. They were for a boy I used to know.

                                        

But Emori loves him still, in whatever form he comes in. She thinks she always will.

 

“See you on the other side,” John says.

 

He turns away from her. Their parting rings with the finality of something breaking, of the desert crumbling away and dying, of a door slamming closed.

 

John doesn’t look back, and Emori doesn’t see his face again before they leave. Only her own, etched with longing, reflected in the glass of the air lock doors.

 

* * *

 

Emori’s quiet as they prepare their descent. She feels weary, limbs loose and heavy; the energy to speak, to do anything but get seated and secured, simply doesn’t exist. Within her throbs an old, familiar deep-set ache, so invasive and overwhelming she can hardly focus on anything else.

 

Raven pauses in her preparation; she glances at Emori in the seat beside her, her hand hovering over the buttons of the control panel. “He’ll be fine,” she assures her softly. “They’ll make it down.”

 

Emori doesn’t know how to explain. She’s been losing him in little pieces every day for the past few years; this is just the end of it. How does she explain that it’s a relief – in the way an oncoming disaster is just a bit more bearable than the time spent dreading it? This pain has been a long time coming. At least now it’s finally hit.

 

Maybe now the wound can heal.

 

* * *

 

It’s strange being on Earth again. Emori forgot how many things she missed while in space. The sun is warm on her skin; the air is fresh and clean. It’s beautiful.

 

But it’s dangerous, too. The Earth doesn’t hesitate to remind her of its cruelty, and Emori soon finds herself missing the peace of the Ring. They find enemies only a few days after arriving and are almost immediately separated. Raven, Echo, and Emori manage to stay together, but they lose track of Monty and Harper.

 

Emori is so scared for her family – for the two they left in space and the two they lost on Earth and even the two that are still with her but might not be for long. It seems everything she once had and loved is splintering into pieces.

 

Baylis’s words from long ago whisper in her mind. Even as a memory, his voice makes her skin crawl. “You are nothing,” he’d told her. “You have nothing.” She hasn’t thought of those words for years, now. They haven’t been true for a while.

 

She’s terrified they might be becoming true again.

 

What is she without her family? Without the Ring? Without John? Is she just a frikdriena, abandoned and unloved, once more? She's more scared of that than she cares to admit.

 

Raven, Echo, and Emori grow closer in the others’ absence. They huddle tight around the campfire Echo builds a few nights after they lose their friends, shoulder to shoulder despite the space around them, scared to drift too far away. Emori sits in the middle. The heat of the other two pressing in on both sides of her is comforting, and she grounds herself in it.

 

She has not lost everything – not yet.

 

“They’ll be fine,” Raven says, breaking the silence. “Monty’s smart, and Harper can fight.” It’s clear she’s only trying to convince herself. Her face is pale in the light of the campfire. Emori takes her hand and laces their fingers together, squeezing gently. Raven squeezes back.

 

“Do you think Bellamy and John are okay?” Echo asks. The reminder smarts as if Echo smacked her in the face. Emori clenches her teeth together so tightly she can hear them grinding, but says nothing. Is it even her place? She didn’t know the man they left behind.

 

But she did, her heart argues. She knew him as well as she knew her self – knew every broken piece and every nightmare, every fault and every fear. It was just easier to pretend he wasn’t the boy she fell in love with – to try and convince herself it didn’t hurt when he pulled away, when he drew up his walls, when he stayed behind.

 

It’s easier to lose a stranger than a loved one, after all.

 

But Emori knows he was never a stranger, and her heart has not stopped it’s aching no matter how many lies she tells herself. The wound has not started healing; his absence hurts as much as the day it happened.

 

Stay safe, she thinks, with a desperation that borders on praying, and then she breaks, splintering finally under a weight that’s been building for so long.

 

The two remaining members of her family hold her tight from both sides as she sobs.

 

* * *

 

They’re in the forest the next morning when they hear something quickly approaching through the trees. They’re in Eden, the patch of thriving earth that everyone is fighting and dying over, and Emori knows that whatever is headed their way is likely a threat. Her grip tightens around her knife, and she positions herself in front of Raven. Echo steps up next to her, her own sword drawn and ready.

 

Emori is terrified, but she will not show it – she will not give her enemies the satisfaction of seeing it. Let whatever threat come; she will not give up the rest of her family without a fight. There may be wars being waged over Eden, but this is what she chooses to fight and die for.

 

She refuses to lose another piece of her home.

 

The sound of pounding footsteps grows louder. The tall ferns in front of them rustle as a shape bursts through them, barreling towards the three women. Emori raises her knife, ready.

 

And freezes, limbs turning to stone in midair.

 

John stumbles to a halt in front of her, nearly falling before he finds his balance.  He struggles to catch his breath, and Emori wonders absently how long he’s been running. His face is red with exertion, and his forehead shimmers with sweat.

 

“Holy fuck,” Emori hears Raven exclaim from behind her. “You made it.”

 

Out of the corner of her eyes, Emori sees Echo lower her sword, but Emori herself cannot seem to move. Her knife hovers in the air; it’s shaking.

 

“I made it,” John gasps. “And you – you guys –“ His eyes lock with Emori’s. She can scarcely breathe. Her chest is caving in on itself. “Emori,” he gasps, her name like a prayer on his lips, and the sound of it hits her like a punch, hard and sudden. It’s not the knife, she realizes. She’s the one shaking.

 

How can he just stand here and say her name like that, after everything? How can he still hold so much power over her?

 

Why can’t she stop shaking?

 

“You’re okay,” John whispers, sounding amazed and relieved – sounding reverent. “I wasn’t sure – I heard some men from Eligius talking about the group from space – that they’d captured someone.” He pauses to swallow and breathe. He’s still heaving from his run. “I thought – I didn’t know.” He’s having trouble getting the words out; she doesn’t think it’s just because he's out of breath.

 

John looks like he’s in pain, his face a grimace – so how come she’s the one who feels like she’s been struck?

 

Emori lowers her knife; it takes everything in her to do that much. She seems to have lost the ability to speak, but she doesn’t know what she would say if she could.

 

Now that he’s here and safe and so clearly alive, the terror is gone; all that’s left in its place Is the hurt and the anger. How could you, she wants to scream. You said you’d never leave me. You said you were my home. What else was a lie? What else have you changed your mind on?

 

John takes a step towards her. Emori steps backwards before she realizes she’s even moved.

 

John halts, and his eyes are wounded. You wanted space, Emori thinks viciously. Here, you can have it.

 

John made it back to her, but the desert is still between them – just as unconquerable as ever.


	2. Lapse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the lovely comments and interest in this fic! It has now fully spiraled into something with an actual plot - so I've decided to make it 3 parts now instead of 2.
> 
> The way Murphy and his depression and the issues that split Memori up in this verse are characterized differently than canon, because they are based on what I was imagining after reading Richard's interview and before the season aired.
> 
> Also, all my love and thanks to infernalandmortal for editing, showering me with love and support, and crying over this fic with me. You're the best!

****They trade stories as they make camp that night. John’s face tightens when he hears about Monty and Harper, and his hands fumble with the straps of his backpack, twitching and tapping at the worn fabric. They don’t settle as he tells them he’s been separated from Bellamy.

The tapping echoes deep within Emori’s chest; in her gut, anxiety churns like a sea snake. Her heart aches for Bellamy; beneath that, it aches still for Otan, in the way it always does.

Echo’s face hardens at the news; she becomes a ghost of her past self, the impenetrable and frightening Azgedan spy, her softness devoured by an icy mask. Emori places a hand on her elbow in reassurance, and, at her touch, some of the softness returns. The mask doesn’t retreat completely, but it splinters, and through the gaps Emori can read the pain in her eyes.

She hopes desperately that her family can be returned to all of them, safe and whole.

John’s fingers keep tapping. Emori wants to rip his hand away from the strap or silence it within her own, but the threat of the desert keeps her from touching him. She tries to ignore the sound.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees John watching her. He’s hardly looked away from her since he found them, and his eyes rest heavy on her back. Emori rolls her shoulders, as if she can shrug his gaze away. She looks everywhere but at him. Even as he speaks, she keeps her eyes on the ground or at his feet, and never at his eyes. She doesn’t know what she’ll find there. She’s too afraid to check.

They start making plans for a rescue. Raven seems more willing to risk it now, and whether it’s because John’s back or because Bellamy’s missing, Emori doesn’t know. She listens half-heartedly as the others discuss possibilities for attack, feeling as if she’s drifting far away from them, hearing the muffled conversation from a distance. It’s not that she doesn’t want to help save her friends, but she can’t seem to focus. Her mind keeps reeling and spinning, like John’s return sent it tumbling away from her.

It’s a relief when the others finally settle for bed, and Emori is quick to turn in. She keeps her back to John as she lies down and hopes that that alone can let her forget him for the next few hours.

 

* * *

 

 

Emori hears her name drift through the air a couple hours later. It’s still dark outside, and she had been half-buried in a fitful sleep before the voice woke her. For a moment, she thinks she’s imagined it, but when she doesn’t reply, it comes again, quiet and pleading. “Emori.”

It’s John. Her back is turned to him, but she squeezes her eyes shut tighter anyway, as if that will make him disappear. She’d cover her ears if it wouldn’t confirm she’s still awake. Instead, she holds very still and keeps her breathing even, faking sleep.

It’s strange. She’d missed him desperately while he was away, but now she can’t stand to be close to him.

John sighs behind her. It’s a sad and lonely sound, but it fits him now. “I know you’re awake,” he whispers, careful not to stir the others. “You snore.”

“I do not,” she argues before she even realizes she’s speaking and wants to hit herself. The game up, she pushes herself to a sitting position and turns to look at him.

He looks like he would be smug if he had the energy for it. Instead, he just looks brittle and drained – a withered husk wrapped around a failing frame.

Her chest aches in the space marked for him.

“What?” she hisses when he doesn’t speak.

John avoids her gaze, looking towards the ground in front of him instead. He scratches at the dirt with his fingernail, drawing meaningless lines just for something to do with himself.

“Shit, here I was worried about you, and you’re ready to bite my head off,” he mutters. His voice is soft – softer certainly than hers – but only the kind of softness that comes from bone-deep exhaustion. When he glances up to see her answering glare, he sighs and looks back at the lines he’s drawing in the dirt.  “I really thought – I’m glad you’re okay.”

 _No thanks to you_ , she manages to keep herself from saying – but just barely. It sits hot and bitter on her tongue amongst a hundred other words she wants to say. If she opens her mouth, she’s afraid the torrent of hate and blame and hurt will never stop; she’ll drown him in the depths of it – maybe she’ll drown them both.

And after it’s all spilled out of her, who will she even be? What will be left of them if she lets it go?

“Emori,” he says. It hangs in the air like something heavy. She’s tired of being a burden he seems to carry. She’s tired of hearing her name spoken like a weight. She almost wishes he would stop saying it at all, with the same desperation. She sometimes, bitterly, wishes he would disappear completely and take all the hurt he’s caused her with him.

It is exhausting to weather the seasons of his moods. If his goal was to whittle her down into tired bones so they could match like mirrored images once more, he’s nearly succeeded.

Emori decides she doesn’t care what he has to say anymore. She’s done. She can only care so much before it ruins her. “It’s late, John,” she tells him, then lays back down and turns her back to him. The movement feels reminiscent of the closing airlock doors – and she thinks that if that wasn’t their conclusion, maybe this will be.

Eventually, she promises herself, the grief will fade.

 

* * *

 

 

They hear their enemies before they see them. Their powerful weapons have made them overconfident in their safety, and they’re loud, unafraid of enemies overhearing them. Then again, Emori figures there isn’t much reason for them to be afraid – there hasn’t been a single sign of the 1200 that made it into the bunker since they arrived and the seven, now four, of them alone aren’t much of a threat.

Echo forces them to stay hidden in the trees and scouts ahead. Emori holds her breath while they wait, listening for Echo’s scream or a sign that she’s been spotted, but it doesn’t come. A few minutes later, she reappears and motions them silently towards her. The four of them duck behind a small snow-covered hill, close enough they can observe their enemies, but hopefully far enough away they won’t be spotted. Emori’s familiar with this; she’s certain Echo is too.

The clearing is filled with people, all of them in similar clothing, most of them large and muscular, some tattooed. Almost all of them look like they would put up a good fight even without their high-tech weapons, though there are a few that Emori thinks she could manage to take down alone.

Their ship is parked behind them, a great behemoth that likely holds all sorts of rooms and hallways – and no way for them to easily locate where Monty and Harper, and potentially Bellamy, are being held. One of them will have to find a way inside.

They head back into the forest to make camp and discuss their plans. Raven passes around the last of the rations they brought down from the Ring; it isn’t much, but Echo was hesitant to start a fire so close to their enemies and Emori had agreed.

“I will sneak inside,” Echo volunteers immediately, keeping her voice quiet. “I’ll have the best chance of getting in undetected. I just need you to draw their attention.” She draws out a basic map of the area in the dirt between them as she talks.

They have the gun that Emori managed to pull off their attackers when they first ran into them in the forest, along with her knife and Echo’s sword. It’s not enough.

“So we’ll create a distraction,” Raven says.

“Where’s the rocket? Is it still intact?” John asks. When Emori glances at him, she’s surprised to find his eyes brighter than they’ve been in a long time.

“It’s a couple miles away, but still in one piece,” Raven explains. “They must have spotted us while we were coming down. That’s how they found us when we landed. We put some distance between us and it immediately.”

John nods along as he takes that in. “How much fuel is left?”

Raven catches on immediately. She grins. It looks sharp in the shadows of the forest. “You want to make an explosion.”

John grins back. It’s still lacking the energy he used to have, but it’s more than any of them have seen on him for a while. It hurts more than Emori would care to admit that it wasn’t directed at her; she tastes bitterness on her tongue, then swallows it down and scolds herself for her foolishness. “You set some bombs, the Eligius come running, and I can pick them off with that.” He motions towards the stolen gun at Emori’s side.

Raven’s grin gets even deadlier. “Move positions often. I can create at least four bombs from the fuel we have left. I’ll set them off whenever they get too close to you.” She turns to Echo. “Between the two of us, that should hopefully buy you enough time to get in and find the others.”

No one brings up Emori’s role, but she’s certain of what she’s going to do. John and Raven will have the distraction handled, and she isn’t letting Echo risk her life alone.

She’s going into the ship to find her missing friends.

 

* * *

 

 

They head back to the rocket the next day. Luckily it seems to have been abandoned where it landed and doesn’t appear to have been messed with. By the time night is falling, they’ve stripped it of everything they need and headed back to their enemies’ camp. Raven works late into the night building the bombs; by morning, she has four of them just like she predicted. As the sun rises, they return to the snow-covered bank they hid behind two days ago with their bombs in tow.

“I’ll set up over there,” Raven motions towards a spot far from the ship entrance. “But I’ll move after I set off the first one.”

John slings the gun strap over his shoulder. “I’ll make sure they don’t have a chance to find you,” he promises her.

Raven turns to Echo. “You ready?”

Echo nods, and before anyone has a chance to move, Emori says, “I’m coming in with you.”

Everyone startles, but John’s the only one to object. “What? Emori, no.”

Anger flushes her cheeks. “I’ve already decided, John,” she snaps. “She needs someone with her in case she runs into trouble.”

“Are you crazy?” he snaps back, and his voice raises enough that Echo and Raven cast wary glances over the top of their hiding place. Echo shushes him angrily, but he ignores her, eyes locked with Emori’s. She can see fire in them again. “That’s too dangerous. Stay out here, and – and I’ll go in with Echo.”

“I can’t shoot a gun,” she argues, and he flounders.

“She’s right. She’s the most useful with me,” Echo says. John jerks his head to glare at her, and the fire burns brighter. Underneath her own anger, Emori’s glad to see it.

“This is the best plan,” Emori says. John looks back at her, and she thinks she can see desperation in his eyes. Fear, maybe. She hasn’t been able to read him in a long time – he hasn’t given her the chance – and she wonders if she’s out of practice. “I can take care of myse-“

“I don’t want to lose you!” John nearly shouts.

The silence that falls after his outburst is deafening. No one moves. Echo and Raven throw quick looks at the Eligius crew, but they don’t seem to have heard – the loud music they’re blaring in the clearing is giving the four of them an advantage.

Emori feels like a supernova exploding. She’s spitting when she answers, “You have no right to say that.”

John clenches his teeth like he’s bracing himself against pain. _Good_ , she thinks. _Hurt. It’s your turn._

“Echo,” Raven interrupts. “Come help me with these explosives, would you?” Echo looks confused for a brief moment, before her eyes light with understanding. She glances at John, then Emori, then follows Raven to the explosives a few feet away. It doesn’t give them much privacy – just the illusion of it, but Emori appreciates the effort. She’d rather not have this fight with an audience.

Emori blinks furiously against the tears building in her eyes. “You don’t get to – when you – I.” Her words stumble, caught in the anger and hurt and utter confusion that has been suffocating her for months now. She’s never been able to understand who he’s become, why he does what he does now, how he even feels about her now. She’s no surer now than she used to be.

“You left me,” she manages.

“I came back,” he says desperately.

Emori shakes her head wildly. “No,” she gasps. “Before that. Not when you stayed behind. You’ve been leaving me for _years_.” Her voice breaks on the last word. “Years, John.”

If he asked, she doesn’t think she could pinpoint when it started. It began slow – every once in a while, he’d just shut down. Stop talking to her. Sometimes he’d even disappear, and she wouldn’t be able to find him anywhere on the Ring. Eventually she stopped looking.

He stopped wanting her, and no matter how much she tried to pry at his walls, he kept them up. He built more. There was a fortress around him so well built she couldn’t find a crack to slip through, and it hurt her the more she tried and failed. So she stopped trying. She pulled away from him the way he’d pulled away from her. The space between them on their bed grew larger with each night. Their room grew colder with each day. The desert grew between them in the broken spaces.

Emori reads her own anguish in John’s face as he stares at her, her own confusion in the twist of his eyebrows. How can he possibly be confused when he was the one to start it?

“I didn’t,” he gasps. “I never left. I was right there.”

And he was. Right there in their room, right there at her side, a silent ghost she couldn’t shake. And maybe that had made it worse, because she’d never been able to sever the dead weight their relationship had become and it’d dragged her down with him. She’d been trapped at the edge of the desert, hungry and thirsty, but unable to leave.

“You stopped talking to me. You stopped caring that I was even there.” It hadn’t been just her, she knows. It had been everyone. Everything. And maybe that should make it easier to swallow, but it doesn’t – because even if he turned against the world, how could he ever do that to her? What happened to damn the world but the two of them? What happened to them against everything? When had she become just another part of the world he hated?

“You stopped loving me,” she chokes, and there it is, the one thing she’s wanted and feared to say for so long – the thing she fears most of all.

When had it happened? She’s spent hours going through her memories searching for the clues, the signs she missed. When hadn’t she been enough anymore?

John looks like he’s been hit. “No,” he gasps, more a moan than a word. “No, I didn’t. Never.”

“Then why couldn’t you talk to me? Why did you push me away?”

“I don’t –“ He shakes his head, at a loss. “I don’t know,” he confesses, and it’s honest.

Confused and broken and so honest it stings.

It hangs there in the silence. Emori doesn’t know if they’ve solved anything. Are they any better off than when they started?   _I don’t know either,_ she thinks. _I don’t know why it happened. I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know who we are anymore._

John chokes out a laugh full of bitterness. Neither of them can find the words for anything else. Emori still doesn’t have the answers she wants, but she knows now he can’t give her any. Maybe they’re both lost and clinging to something they can’t get back. Maybe it’s best they stop trying. Rip the arrow out and then the wound can heal, she thinks, like she thought when he stayed and she tried to mourn and bury him. Leave it in, and it never will.

“We should get ready,” she says quietly.

She can’t read the look John gives her – something sad and fragile and heavy in a way that feels…she’s not sure. Important? Hungry? Final?

Is this the end then? Not the closing airlock doors or the turning of her back – this?

“Survive, please,” he begs, echoing her words from days ago – and from years ago before that, when they both still knew how to fit together.

“I will,” she promises, and he nods, like he’s assuring himself of her words. He breathes in deeply, and they both ignore the way it catches in his throat. His eyes are rimmed with red, shining with unshed tears; Emori knows hers are the same. “You too.”

When Raven sets off the first bomb, Echo and Emori wait to see the Eligius crew members turn their attention to the sound, then bolt across the clearing towards the doors. They slip inside the open entrance in minutes without being spotted. Emori hears the sound of gunfire from outside and forces herself to ignore it, even while her heart leaps into her throat with fear.

Echo leads the way, communicating silently with head nods and hand gestures as they make their way through the halls. They’re careful around corners, looking out for any Eligius crew members that might have stayed behind, but they see no one. They move fast, but the ship is big and unfamiliar; they haven’t found any sign of their friends by the time another explosion sounds.

Emori and Echo lock eyes, and neither of them needs to voice what they’re thinking. That’s two down – they need to move faster.

Eventually they come to a locked door deep in the ship. Echo glances left and right, and, seeing no one, stops to put her ear against the door. After a moment, her eyes widen, and she looks at Emori with a grin. Emori puts her own ear against the door, and though the heavy metal muffles the sound, she hears a feminine voice that she recognizes instantly as Harper. Relief crashes over her like a wave.

They turn to the door. Echo tries to shove her weight against it, but it doesn’t budge. Before she can try again, Emori grabs her arm and shakes her head. The door is solid metal; all Echo will manage to do is break her own arm.

She gestures towards the control panel on the wall beside the door, then pulls out the small kit of mismatched tools she always carries with her now. Six years in space with Raven Reyes has taught her a lot, and she puts all those lessons to use as she pulls the control panel apart and triggers the correct wire to open the doors.

Monty and Harper are sitting against the far wall in a small room that might have once been meant for storage. They look worn and tired, but relatively okay – the only injuries Emori can see are a few bruises, though there are thick, metal collars around their necks that look ominous. Both of them perk up immediately at the sight of them.

“Emori! Echo!” Harper gasps as she stands up, excited and relieved all at once.

“Quiet!” Echo hisses, but there’s a grin pulling at the corners of her lips, and she steps easily into Harper’s hug.

Emori goes to check the collar around Monty’s neck, but he grabs her in a hug as soon as she gets close. She grips him back just as tightly, weak with the relief that her friends are alright. Well, all of them except –

“Where’s Bellamy?” Echo asks, realizing at the same time as Emori that he isn’t in the room.

Harper and Monty exchanged confused glances.

“He’s not still in space with Murphy?” Harper asks, words tentative, as if she’s afraid to hear the answer to her question.

“No, they made it back down. John says they got separated when they ran into these people,” Emori explains, her agitation making her words short and almost harsh. It’s like losing Otan all over again. She feels sick.

A third explosion interrupts her thoughts. She turns quickly to Echo. “We need to leave.” Echo looks back at her, and her expression is conflicted, tight and worried. She eyes Monty and Harper, then the door, then looks back at Emori to nod. Together the two of them lead Monty and Harper out of the room and back along the maze of hallways towards the entrance.

As the near, Echo comes to a halt. She locks eyes with Emori, and Emori knows instantly what her plan is, and she feels her fear rising like a scream in her throat that she cannot voice. “Echo, that was three. We don’t time,” she says before Echo can speak, but it’s not use.

“Get them out of here and regroup with the others,” Echo tells her. She doesn’t hug Emori – likely because there’s no time and they’re too exposed in the open hallway – but she grabs Emori’s hand, her mutated one, the one that took Echo years to be comfortable touching, tight in her own and squeezes.

And then she’s gone before Emori can say another word, slipping around the corner with her sword held at the ready, back into the belly of the beast and the countless enemies they’d been lucky enough not to meet on their way in. Emori’s stomach pitches like a ship in a storm. She feels fear and frustration in equal parts, as angry at Echo for going against the plan as she is concerned for her safety.

But there’s no time. She gestures for Monty and Harper to follow. As they near the exit, she breathes a sigh of relief to see no one standing guard out front. The chaos of gunfire and screaming is loud outside. Raven and John are doing their part. The crew is still distracted, and the way out is open for them.

She makes her decision and steadies herself on it before she can second-guess it. “Head out and to the left. Make a break for the woods. Raven and John are keeping them distracted. I’m going to get Echo.”

This family of misfits she found in space is the most important thing Emori has ever had. She refuses to lose any piece of it. With a deep breath, she heads back into the ship.


End file.
